This Unit provides a nucleus of ongoing inquiry in which investigators can benefit from their mutual association and be available to exploit research opportunities in psychiatric epidemiology. The integration of the Field Stations into their respective communities makes available laboratory populations to measure rates of mental disorders and to explore their modifiable social concomitants. Intermittent small scale studies on the service operations in the County are undertaken from time to time, some of which only inform the administrators more fully of what is occurring, but most of which have in fact led to publications. Maintaining a psychiatric register allows the analyzation of service patterns and the evaluation of their effectiveness especially in regard to the changing incidience of long- term psychiatric hospitalization. The social breakdown syndrome concept has been developed and quantified as a criterional measure of the results of new patterns of mental health care. It is now possible to investigate reliably further aspects of its causes and prevention. Toward these goals, new methods for estimating incidence and episode duration have been initiated and will be developed. A new system to retrieve data from the published literature is used in a continuing effort to keep the researchers abreast of the new and important developments in psychiatric epidemiology.